56 [Assembly 



locality. She adorns the summits of mountains with plants, 

 many of which it would be useless to look for in the plains at 

 their feet. Some kinds she places in low wet grounds, others on 

 rocks, others in deep fertile soils, others in clefts, while others, 

 again, like Viscum album, the Orchideae, and a vast number of 

 Cryptogamise, only grow on the roots, branches, and leaves of 

 other plants. 



Though the scenery within sight from an elevated point may 

 be composed of many hundred kinds of trees and shrubs, we find 

 that tlie principal forms consist of but few. A distance from 

 those masses we see a smaller group of the same species; farther 

 on a scattered cluster, less and less in number, until the soil 

 ceases to furnish the substances required for the healthy growth 

 of that species. Nature does not withdraw at once the soil best 

 adapted to the oak, but forms a weaving without any visible 

 boundary. Among those scattered groups we fiud some of quite 

 a ditferent character, products of a different soil, and in following 

 the same direction we see their number increase, until they be- 

 come the sole occupants of that soil. Besides those forming the 

 main character, we see other genera or species in clusters attached 

 to the masses, or forming groups of their own, while those of 

 inferior height are gathered along the border of the woods, here 

 and there intercepted by a deep cut, allowing a view into the inte- 

 rior darkness, or are scattered loosely, as if cut off from their 

 associates by some accident, but still covering a patch of their 

 own. 



Nature is so manifold, and sometimes so extreme in her pictures, 

 that it would require a volume to describe them. Each, how- 

 ever, is charming, and full of harmony when in its proper place. 

 Where representatives of all sorts are found growing within a 

 limited space, our advice is, not to copy such confusion. It should 

 be remembered that nature does not plant trees, but sows them, 

 and that in cases of such confusion, the winds have thwarted her 

 original designs. Contrasts produced by trees and shiubs of dif- 

 ferent colors, foliage, &c., are sometimes a valuable acquisition to 

 the landscape painter and the gardener, but it is a mistHke to 

 mingle indiscriminately together masses of deciduous and ever- 



